When is lots of imagination too much imagination?

If you keep your eyes on the prize you risk tripping over your own feet.

Sometimes, my imagination is too vivid. I’m not talking about catastrophising — my amazing ability to imagine the worst in almost any situation — but instead my ability to easily imagine finished projects and how I’ll feel about them when they are done.

It is, on the one hand, a real skill to be able to imagine a finished project, whatever kind of project it is. Having a detailed vision for what you want to achieve is an important part of the creative process. The more detailed that vision is, the more accurate your planning, the easier the execution and the closer to your vision the final product will be.

I am an avid crafter, and I frequently find myself lying in bed, planning craft projects that I have coming up, or even craft projects that I’ll probably never have time do. I think about how I’m going to construct a garment, where zip is going to go, how I’m going to position the darts — little pleats that give the garment its 3D shape — and how I’m going to draft the pattern for the neckline and sleeves.

But it’s frustrating that making garment takes so much more time than imagining it does.

I have to trace the basic pattern off my pattern block (a pattern that’s designed to fit me exactly) and then make any necessary adjustments, such as the aforementioned neck line or sleeves. I have to cut out the pieces from, say, a bedsheet to make a toile, which is a test version. Cutting out always takes an age. It’s tedious, precise work because if you get your cutting out wrong, everything else will be wrong too.

Then it’s pinning and sewing, pinning and sewing, pinning and sewing. Trying on the toile, making more adjustments, and then perhaps doing the whole thing again with another old bedsheet for a second toile. Or I take the plunge and use my often expensive best fabric.

Honestly, it takes forever. Way longer than it feels like it ought to when I’m lying in the dark, imagining the how great the finished garment is going to be and how marvellous I’ll feel wearing it. Worse, when I do finish it, it rarely looks as good as it did in my mind. The fit isn’t quite as good. It’s perhaps not long enough. Or too long. Or looks too handmade.

For me, writing is the same. I find it very, very easy to imagine how it will feel to have written. How great the book or script will be when it’s done. All the clever jokes. The cunning allusions. The layers. The depth. Oh, my, the depth. People will submerge themselves in my words, which will close over the top of their heads, the sun fractured by the waves of emotions….

OK.

Stop that.

Stop that right now.

Because remember how I said that it was important to have a detailed vision? None of that is useful detail. It’s all emotional projection. It’s how I feel when I read someone else’s amazing book and yes, sure, I’d love for someone to think a fraction of that when they read stuff I’ve written, but none of that helps me actually write.

It’s easy to get lost in this kind of imagining because it feels good. The problem is that it gets in the way of actually writing. It’s not just a distraction, it feeds into perfectionism, which can then create a big, solid block.

I talk a lot about process, because that’s the way to past these sorts of problems. Ignore the end product. Forget how you want to feel when you finish the final draft. Don’t even begin to think about how readers might react.

Instead, let’s go back to that detailed vision. Think about plot, character, relationships, world building. And if you don’t want to do that as you fall asleep lest you come up with something amazing and then promptly forget it, think about how your characters feel. What emotions drive them? How do they feel in the situations you’ve thought up for them? How will they react?

So much writing is actually done in our subconscious as we mull things over. The results of all that thought pops out when we sit down to write. We call it ‘inspiration’ but it’s not, it’s giving our subconscious mind permission to think and the materials to think with.

If we allow ourselves to be distracted by imagining a perfect end to our project, we’re denying our subconscious the food it needs to come up with the solutions to our creative problems.

Next time I’m tempted to think about how I’m going to produce the Fieldwork podcast, or how to organise a table read, or how on earth I’m going to learn about casting voice actors, I’m going to just shut that line of thought right down. I’ll cross those bridges as and when I get to them.

More important, for now, is to get deep into the minds of my characters and figure out how they always manage to screw everything up for themselves. It’s not like I don’t have a lot of raw material to work with.